Living Room Changes Coming!

My living room has been neglected for quite some time now, left in a state of limbo where it’s usable but still not quite finished. And since it is usable just like it is, I really hadn’t planned on focusing on it any time soon.

But if you know anything about me, then you know that when inspiration hits me, I have to respond. So the other day, I was sitting and scrolling through Instagram, just minding my own business. I had no plans or motives other than to entertain my brain for a few minutes. But then it happened. I saw a room with gorgeous pink draperies, and the thought hit me like a ton of bricks that THAT’S what my living room needs! PINK DRAPERIES!!

Okay, so let me back up. If you’ve been around here for long, you know how I’ve struggled to pull my living room together. Never in the history of ever have I had so much trouble pulling a room together than I’ve had with my living room.

After struggling for so long, I finally bought this amazing rug (which is still available, and on sale right now!)

But the dark gray fireplace seemed to make everything dark. So I painted the fireplace teal, made some colorful artwork to go above the mantel, and selected purple for the draperies.

The rug was awesome. The new fireplace color was awesome. And the artwork above the fireplace is still one of my favorite things I’ve ever made.

But the draperies. I’ll be very honest with you here. It’s not the look of the drapery that bothered me. It’s the fact that I chose a fabric that’s borderline too thick for draperies, and is such a pain to work with. By the time I made it through that first panel, I just couldn’t make myself do another one. And the thought of having to do THREE more (two of which needed to be double width) just…well, no. I couldn’t do it.

As it turns out, I love the purple draperies in the breakfast room far more than I like them in the living room anyway, so I will have to make one more. And I have a plan for the rest of the purple fabric that doesn’t include pinch pleats through three thicknesses of fabric, so it will work out better in the end.

But that left me, once again, with no draperies for the living room.

I had the rug, a small neutral-colored recliner, a coffee table, a chandelier, a pretty fireplace color, and some artwork. I wanted to keep and use all of those things. What I couldn’t figure out was the draperies. Plus, the green loveseat was making things difficult for me.

So I decided that the green loveseat will eventually go in Matt’s gameroom, and I needed a new loveseat for the living room.

In the meantime, I finished the entryway (which is really just a wall in this same room that I call an “entryway”), and then decided on fabrics for the two chairs that I’ll be reupholstering for the living room.

The floral fabric will be on the backs and sides of the chairs, and the solid velvet will be on the fronts of the chairs. That project is still in the plan, and I’m very excited about seeing those chairs finished.

So that’s been where things have stood for quite a while now — a few things that are definitely staying, a couple of things that are being relocated to other rooms, a big upholstery project that needs to be done, and a huge question mark about the window treatments for the room.

And then inspiration struck about four days ago. PINK. Pink draperies.

I had never considered pink before because Matt’s one rule was “no pink walls.” And while draperies aren’t walls, they still add a whole lot of color to a room, much like walls do. But I showed him the picture (which, sadly, I no longer have) and asked him if he’d be okay with it, and he said he would!

So within the hour, I was at the fabric store looking for the perfect pink fabric.

After searching the whole store through, I found one fabric. It wasn’t as bright as I had originally planned, and yet it was perfect. It was a soft pink. It wasn’t a baby pink, but it was still very much pink, and the color was perfect with my other fabrics.

The actual fabric, however, was not perfect. It was an apparel fabric, and while it was a substantial polyester with a beautiful drape, it was stretchy. And my one cardinal rule of sewing draperies is “Never use apparel fabric for draperies!!”

I don’t know how many times I’ve repeated that to myself and to others, and yet, there I was with the ONE perfect fabric in the whole store, and it was a stretchy apparel fabric.

Y’all, I went with it. I broke my one cardinal rule, because it was too perfect. Here is my new light pink drapery fabric with the floral and velvet for the chairs.

It looks gorgeous with the rug, the teal fireplace, and my teal kitchen (which is in the next room and very visible from the living room). It’s basically perfect all around.

Except that it’s stretchy. After explaining the situation to the lady at the cutting table, she had no creative solutions for me. She had never sewn draperies before. But the Husqvarna Viking lady was nearby, so the lady at the cutting table called her over and I explained what I wanted to do. Initially, she looked at me as if I were insane for wanting to use a stretchy fabric for draperies (it really is a crazy thing to do), but after giving it some thought, she had a great solution to make it work. At least, it sounds great. I haven’t actually tried it yet, but when I do, I’ll share the details. I’m so hopeful that it’ll work out, because one way or another, this fabric will be on my living room windows!

So that leaves me with one final big decision for the living room — a new loveseat.

I’ve spent every spare minute over the last four days searching for the perfect loveseat, and I finally narrowed it down to two from Birch Lane — the Karalynn loveseat and the Kerry loveseat.

And after looking through every single one of their 120+ available fabrics for those loveseats, I ordered about 10 samples, and then narrowed it down to two — a light gray and a darker gray. Both of them are Sunbrella fabrics, so they should be pretty durable.

Here’s is the lighter gray sample with my fabrics…

And the darker gray fabric…

On the Birch Lane website, it allows you to preview the loveseats with the selected fabric, but they don’t look accurate to me. We can get a general idea of how they might look, though.

Here’s the Karalynn Loveseat with the light gray fabric…

And here’s the Karalynn Loveseat with the darker gray fabric…

But you can see that their pictures showing the fabrics on the loveseat aren’t quite the same as the actual fabric samples. The darker gray seems to be a truer gray in person than it shows on that loveseat. The loveseat actually looks more taupe, but I don’t see taupe in that fabric sample.

Anyway, moving on to the other loveseat. Here’s the Kerry Loveseat in the lighter gray…

The light gray on the Kerry Loveseat looks more accurate to me. It looks pretty much identical to the sample fabric to my eye.

And here’s the Kerry Loveseat in the darker gray…

That still looks off to me. It looks way more taupe than the fabric sample. But even if it does turn out to be a tiny bit more on the taupe side than the true gray side, that might not be a bad thing. After all, the color on my walls (Benjamin Moore Classic Gray) is more of a warm gray, and the fabric on the small recliner is more of a light warm gray. And the grays in the rug are more on the warm gray side.

So those are the two finalist loveseats, and the two finalist fabric samples.

As far as the loveseats go, I’m undecided. The pictures make them look very different sizes, but the dimensions listed for both are almost the same. There may be slight differences, but nothing like the pictures would indicate. I like both of them, and at one moment the Karalynn (left above) is my favorite, and then an hour later, the Kerry (right above) is my favorite.

With the fabrics, I’m leaning towards the darker gray. I just love the contrast of the darker gray against all of the various pinks. But I don’t want it to end up looking too taupe! A warm gray is fine, but taupe isn’t. The lighter gray seems like the safer choice, which also seems a bit boring to me. Plus, it’s almost the same color (almost, but not quite) as the little recliner that’s in the living room. I’m not really sure how I feel about that.

Thoughts? And if any of you have a piece of furniture with Sunbrella Flagship Pewter on it, I’d love to know if it reads more slightly warm gray or taupe.

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